Writing

While speech has a greater range of non-verbal means to express meaning writing will need a greater accuracy as no immediate feedback is given to the writer. Writing is more precise and it should be more accurate than speech.

1. Historical background

There are various stages of writing. At the first stage writing is a mechanic process during which all the technical aspects of writing can be acquired. The second stage of writing can be called teaching composition which practically means individual creative work. Translation used to belong to this stage. In the renaissance, handwriting had a very important role. In the Middle Ages teaching writing and spelling could not be separated. At the second stage of writing which means individual style and register there are four steps to follow: transcribing (copying), rewriting (changing of the original sentence into another structure), imitation (imitating certain techniques of poets or writers) and then comes creative writing which is an individual activity. In the 20^th century, after WWII all the methods dealt with developing writing skills. In the first three decades after WWII the methodology of teaching English was interested in the product and not the process of writing. In the Audio-lingual method Byrne (1979) dealt with writing though the classical Audio-lingual method wanted to develop all the four simplex skills but they thought that the more students write the higher their academic level will be. Some methodologists thought that writing is only a practice of grammar.

Byrne in his methodology distinguished controlled writing from semi-controlled composition (guided composition) for which sentence transformations were favoured for example, matching two halves of sentences, re-writing, extension of sentences and simplifying sentences. In the end of the sixties something new started referring to complex texts to the complete discourse. This new approach (contrastive rhetorics) states that discourse competence is culture specific. It was the first step in teaching writing when the focus of teaching English fell from the result of writing to the process of writing. By the 90s it had been achieved that language teachers accepted that writing was a very complex thinking process which could be taught and learnt but it had to meet a lot of requirements. For example, the legal background of rhetorics, cultural awareness, rewriting and revision. But we could not miss invention and creativity either. The teacher is supposed to provide students with techniques making it possible for him to meet modern demands.

2. Sub-skills of writing

1. Spelling – is a difficult sub-skill for Hungarian learners as pronunciation does not coincide with the various ways of spelling.

2. Punctuation – in English is completely different from the system in Hungarian as commas have special functions, for example, in relative clauses.

3. Orthography – observing orthographical rules is very important in writing, whenever we teach a new language structure we are supposed to teach the necessary orthographical rules simultaneously with it.

4. Writing at the required speed – writing as motoric process must be done at the required speed.

5. Linguistic competence – which means ‘knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, sentence grammar, semantics and phonology’ (Canale and Swain 1980:29).

6. How to make a text cohesive, well-structured – so as to achieve this aim we need discourse competence which is the ability to connect sentences, to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances .

7. How to focus on the relevant message – a writer should be able to choose the most significant parts from a lot of pieces of information.

8. How to write in the expected style and register – while writing a text the author is expected to be aware of the features of various styles and registers so as to make an appropriate piece of writing (Savignon 1983: 40-41).

3. Stages of teaching writing

While teaching writing teachers are supposed to keep the principle of graduality. In several manuals on methodology developing writing skills was treated in a similar way. According to Rivers (1978) in the first stage writing is a mechanic process which he called ‘writing down’. The next stage would be writing in the language which revealed the grammatical, lexical and pragmatic rules and the awareness of the rules above. At the production stage sentences and paragraphs were formed. The last stage of developing writing skills was free or expressive writing which meant writing compositions in which a language learner could use the language code with necessary awareness and for a certain communicative purpose. Byrne (1979) distinguished the following stages: early stages which meant basic level, the next stage of his system was developing skills which meant the stage between basic and intermediate levels followed by the stage named contexts for writing which was equal to the intermediate level. The last stage of writing was free writing according to Byrne. Gorman (1979) also distinguished four stages of developing writing skills: controlled writing, directed writing, guided writing and independent writing. Nowadays we also define four stages of teaching writing namely:

Teachers are expected to choose texts either for copying or for dictation which are age relevant and interesting. Delayed copying is a challenging task during which the teacher writes a word or a sentence on the board, gives the students a few seconds to look at it and the rubs it out and sees if the students can write it down.

Dictation is a very safe type of exercise if you can keep the language elementary and simple, for beginners dictation should be short and interesting it should have a purpose and be connected to work which has gone before or comes after. With the

‘messenger game’ we can make dictation more interesting. Several students choose a messenger who will listen to the dictation and tries to memorise as many words as s/he can while the other members of the group are sitting far from the teacher.

Having understood a part of the text the messenger will go to his/her group mates to dictate the text which has been heard. So this is the way how teachers can integrate all the four simplex skills in a complex activity.

2. Semi–controlled – fill-in exercises are useful activities, especially at the beginner stages. They do not require much active production of language, since most of the language is given but they require understanding. Try to use meaningful exercises. Fill-in exercises can be used for lexical and grammatical practice. The purpose of guided writing at word level is to make students practise spelling and learn new vocabulary, for example, learners can make lists or personal dictionaries, they can complete labels to pictures or classify words under headings.

The purpose of guided writing at sentence level is to make students practise spelling, punctuation, new vocabulary and structures, for example, they are supposed to write captions for pictures, speech bubbles for cartoons or characters in a story or write sentences based on completed charts, for example, surveys or questionnaires. Students can match halves of sentences and copy them. Students can sequence sentences and copy them, they can be expected to correct mistakes in written questions or they can answer the questions.

3. Free – All free writing activities are to be prepared with warm-up and pre-writing activities. Pre-pre-writing activities can be talking or reading about the subject, students can make word stars, for example. They are asked to write down all the words and the expressions they can think in connection with the topic. Picture descriptions or writing a report or an article can be very good reading or post-listening exercises. The only thing we have to focus on is to prepare this task very thoroughly. In addition to the activities mentioned before teachers should give explanations of words and expressions, a sample or a draft to the composition before expecting the students to write an independent piece of work.

4. Expressive/Creative – this type of writing activities needs a lot of creativity and imagination. Students can be asked to write a short story or a poem, or an article based on their previous experience.

4. The importance of writing process at compositions and essays

In most cases teachers give a title to the students and ask them without any preparation to write an essay or a composition. Though there are methodological steps leading students to essay writing. As a first step teachers should lead in the topic either with a picture or with some introductory questions. Students could be asked to come up with certain ideas about the topic in question. This step can be called brainstorming. The ideas suggested by the students must be put on the board and then classified according to certain criteria, for example, in case of argumentative essays arguments for a principle must be enumerated in a column while counter arguments must be listed in another one. This way we can prepare the next step which is composing. Based on the listed arguments and counter arguments the students are supposed to make an outline of the composition together. The next step to do is making a first draft followed by editing. At this stage it is very important to call the students’ attention to proper organisation and to give them some prompts on how to make a text cohesive. Discourse markers and linking words must be in focus here. The last stage of writing process will be making a final version. Only this step should be made at home.

A piece of writing should contain certain parts: introduction, body and conclusion. Depending on the type of essay the basic parts mentioned above can be varied. In argumentative essays, for example, after the introduction of a problem background information and thesis are given. As a second stage supporting ideas should follow which means reasons to support the thesis, one paragraph for each reason. Refutation will follow this part. After refutation a proper conclusion must be given the function of this is to offer solution or a recommendation. It is important to remember that this part should not bring up a new topic. For further information see Csölle, A. – Kormos, J. (2003).

5. What to focus on?

While writing an essay or a composition students must focus on unity. It means that each sentence in the paragraph relates to the same topic and develops the same controlling idea. Each paragraph within an essay has to be directly related to the thesis. If any sentence or paragraph does not relate to or develop that idea, it is irrelevant and should be omitted from the paragraph or essay. The next term to keep in mind while writing an essay is coherence. A coherent paragraph/essay contains sentences that are logically arranged and flow smoothly. Cohesion is the next term we have to define here. By cohesion we mean the linguistic devices with the help of which the writer makes the text coherent. The strongest cohesive devices include pronominal references (e.g. s/he, them, it) and conjunctions (e.g.

something to do with formality. When we speak about formal style we mean well-organised texts which contain full and mainly multiple sentences, passive voice, indirect speech, sophisticated vocabulary, no contraction and no abbreviation or idioms. By informal style we mean not well-organised texts full of elliptic or simple sentences, idioms, contracted forms, active voice, direct sentences and colloquial vocabulary. While making up a composition, writers should take registers into consideration which are commonly identified by certain phonological variants, vocabulary, idioms and other expressions that are associated with different occupational or socioeconomic groups. Registers enable people to identify with a particular group and to maintain solidarity. Register is also sometimes associated with social class distinctions, but here the line between register and dialect is difficult to define (Brown: 1994).